by Harihar
SwarupHomecoming after 24 yrs for
veteran spokesmanS. JAIPAL REDDYs identity
over the years has been established as the spokesman of
the Janata Dal, the United Front and the Third Front and
he excelled in the task. For almost a decade he handled
the most tricky press briefings, replied to many foxy
questions by scribes but rarely got foxed and tactfully
ducked inconvenient ones.

Madras
Council: Ministers motionMADRAS,
August 28  The discussion was resumed today in the
Madras Legislative Council on the Chief Ministers
motion for appointment of Council Secretaries on a salary
of Rs 500 each per mensem.

by Harihar SwarupHomecoming
after 24 yrs for veteran spokesman

S. JAIPAL REDDYs
identity over the years has been established as the
spokesman of the Janata Dal, the United Front and the
Third Front and he excelled in the task.

For almost a decade he
handled the most tricky press briefings, replied to many
foxy questions by scribes but rarely got foxed and
tactfully ducked inconvenient ones. Never was he
offensive but always objective, never tried to mislead
the press.

For years he dominated
the T.V. channels apprising the press of the acrimonious
deliberations at various forums of the UF. In the process
he invented some of striking phrases; his critics called
him phrase monger.

Jaipal Reddy was rated
as the best spokesman of a political party in the
nineties followed by two others, Vithal Gadgil of the
Congress and Yashwant Sinha (now the Finance Minister) of
the BJP. In the last year of the millennium, UF and
Janata Dal ceased to exit and the two major political
parties have now the worst-ever spokespersons.

Will Sonia Gandhi
consider appointing Jaipal Reddy as the spokesman now
that he has rejoined the Congress?. Her party
faced many disasters in last six months and the daily
briefing at the AICC has been one of them.

As a special gesture
Sonia Gandhi gave him the ticket to contest from the
Miryaguda constituency of Andhra Pradesh, a constituency
of Reddys preference. He had defeated the
formidable Congress MP, Mallikarjun, from Mehboobnagar in
1998. The Congress President, apparently, has big plans
for Reddy; may be he would become the official spokesman
of the party after the election or be given an important
position in the organisation.

It must have been an
agonising experience for Jaipal to return to the parent
organisation after having been a bitter critic of the
post-emergency Congress and Indira Gandhi and remaining
so in the following years. Though he snapped ties, like
many others, with the Congress as a protest against the
Emergency, at heart he always remained a Congressman
 a firm believer in Nehruism and a true secularist.
Jaipal cannot be put in the category of election eve
aaya Ram, gaya Ram. He rejoined the Congress
because of ideological considerations, he claims.

As he himself explains;
I left the Congress in protest against the
temporary aberration of the Emergency; I have rejoined
the Congress because I regard theocratic fascism
(represented by the Sangh Parivar) as a very much
long-term aberration and there is a remote chance
of revival of the third front in the foreseeable future.

There was no option left
for him. Janata Dals ideology, according to him,
was perfect but one split after another  right from
1990  marked by personality clashes and vaulting
personal ambitions of leaders made the organisation
crumble under its own weight. Then the phrase monger in
him awakens and he comes out with a quotable quote:
 I stood like the Casablanca boy on the burning
deck until the deck itself collapsed.

Jaipal Reddy was the
only exception whom the BJP did not approach, knowing
well his strong ideological views but the Telugu Desam
leaders did contact him a number of times with several
offers and that included either contesting a Lok Sabha
seat or go to the Rajya Sabha. He might have preferred
Chandrababu Naidus party but the TDPs truck
with the BJP forced him to spurn its overtures; he
rejected both the offers. In the 1996 elections, Jaipal
wanted the Janata Dal to join hands with Naidu but his
partys official line was to go along with Lakshmi
Parvathi. Having been over-ruled by the Dal leadership,
he opted out of the electoral fray.

The veteran spokesman
knows that he would be target of attack for joining the
Congress  a party he lambasted over the years but
he says he has staked his reputation at the altar
of ideology. One wonders if Jaipal would fit in the
present Congress culture? Ideological commitment has been
the biggest casualty in the 119-year old organisation and
idealism had been substituted by opportunism long ago.
Self-respecting as he is, Jaipal declined to be presented
at the press briefings at the AICC headquarters as a
prize catch. A leader who has been in the limelight for
years scrupulously avoided the glare of TV cameras while
many, who had joined the Congress in last few weeks, vied
with each other to be in the limelight.

Jaipal Reddys
tenure in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting
was too short but, perhaps for the first time, he tried
to resurrect the two powerful medium  All India
Radio and Doordarshan  from the stranglehold of
officialdom. His attempt to grant complete autonomy to
the two powerful media and professionalise them to ensure
objectivity ended with the change of government AIR and
Doordarshan have again become, by and large, instruments
of the ruling dispensations propaganda.

Jaipal as
parliamentarian is another facet of the 57-year old
personality. He has the experience of Andhra Pradesh
assembly (from 1969 to 1984) as well as both houses of
Parliament. He was leader of the Opposition in the Rajya
Sabha from 1991 to 1992. There is no doubt that he has
made a mark in Parliament and it is generally believed
that when Jaipal raise an issue, alarm bells start
ringing in treasury benches. He does his homework well.

Jaipal started his
political career in the Congress and headed the Youth
Congress unit of Andhra Pradesh in the late sixties. He
became Andhra PCC General Secretary in 1969 and held the
office for three years. He is now back in the parent
organisation but it is not the same Congress he had known
24 years back.

Bus
diplomacy and the Vajpayee government

SOMETHING must be
seriously wrong with the timing of the bus diplomacy
launched by the Atal Behari Vajpayee government.

After the manner in
which the bus to Lahore ended at Kargil, it seems the
service to Dhaka launched with equal fanfare could go the
similar way.

Last week the Border
Security Force and Bangladesh Rifles were engaged in
firing in Tripura with each side blaming the other for
opening unprovoked fire. The exchanges
continued for three days.

The matter was sorted
out with South Block summoning the Acting Bangladesh High
Commissioner, Mr Alimul Haque, and demanding that Dhaka
take steps to defuse the tension.

The diplomatic ties
between Delhi and Dhaka were strained after the Assam
Chief Minister, Mr Prafulla Mahanta, stated during his
Independence Day speech that Indian security forces had
seized huge quantities of RDX from ISI agents holed up in
Rajshahi. A few days later, Dhaka claimed that 300 kg of
Indian sulphur, an ingredient used in bombs, was seized
in Benapole.

Dhaka officials felt
that the BJP-led government was making internal security
a poll-plank and were zeroing in on ISI agents in
Bangladesh, on the eastern side.

Nari
Shakti in Bellary

The Congress has decided
to counter BJPs Sushma Swaraj who has been camping
in Bellary by sending two of Mrs Sonia Gandhis
trusted lieutenants  Mrs Ambika Soni and Ms Selja.

After a brief visit to
file her nomination papers, the Congress President
addressed a few rallies in the constituency which goes to
the polls on September 5.

The party despatched its
Secretary, Ms Selja, who withdrew from the contest in
Sirsa and asked her to coordinate with the AICC General
Secretary, Mrs Ambika Soni, joining her the coming week
in the run-up to the elections.

Obviously the Congress
thought it best to counter Ms Swaraj by sending in leader
of former Chief of Mahila Congress Mrs Soni and Ms Selja
 it will be the best possible example of Nari
Shakti.

Seasonal
festival

The politicians in New
Delhi can be trusted to take advantage of any event
 religious, social or even cultural  for
seeking political gains out of it.

This year on Raksha
Bandhan having falled in the run-up to elections even
this festival of brother-sister affection was sought to
be politicised.

With Janamashtmi falling
next week, days before the country goes to the first
phase of polling on September 5, one wonders what will be
the politicians of Delhi up to.

So far, the Roza Iftaar
function was sought to be used by politicians elections
or no elections, nothwithstanding.

Politicians who do not
organise Holi Milans or reception for Diwali, vie with
each other to host Iftaar parties in order to show off
their support among the minorities. Even the Bharatiya
Janata Party with its Hindutva placard has not been
bereft of it.

Preparing
for bigger things

Now that the country is
in election mode, every politician is charting the future
course  most for themselves while a few for their
parties.

With the elections
spread over nearly a month, senior leaders of various
political parties will be criss-crossing the length and
breadth of the country carrying forward their message to
the people.

What do these leaders do
for most of them have to travel several hundred
kilometres a day to address election rallies which only
adds to the fatigue.

Recently the Home
Minister and BJP leader, Mr L. K. Advani, confided that
during travel he tries to catch up on reading and these
days it was a management book by an American author
entitled: Dont sweat the small stuff.
Now that is called preparing for bigger things.

These two lines in the
election campaign cassette of the Samajwadi Party has
come as a major surprise to the party leaders who have
been working with Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav for years.

They point out that ever
since 1988, the election campaign cassette has only
mentioned the name of the party chief and no other party
leader, howsoever strong or popular he may be, was
allowed to be named in the cassette. Even a mention of
another leader would have Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav angry
and the presenters faced major problems after that.

But on this occasion,
not only has the style of presentation been changed to
pop music from the traditional qawwali, but for the first
time, the name of party spokesman, Mr Amar Singh, has
been mentioned along side that of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Incidentally the
cassette has been recorded at the behest of Mr Amar Singh
and as the grapevine has it, at the studios of a major
finance company known to be extremely close to the
Samajwadi Party leader.

Cricket
campaign

It is not only Kargil
but also the World Cup cricket tournament that is having
its echo in the election campaigning. A cricket buff, the
star campaigner of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr
L.K.Advani, these days is using cricket to pep up his
campaigning.

The Union Home Minister
compares the vote of confidence, which the Vajpayee
Government lost by a single vote, with that of an
India-Pakistan cricket match where India with one wicket
in hand needed just one run to win. Alas, the last player
was bowled LBW and that too to a no ball, which the
umpire refused to acknowledge.

Mr Advanis
reference is to the vote cast by the Orissa Chief
Minister, Mr Giridhar Gamang, who despite going to the
state used his Lok Sabha membership to vote. The umpire,
the Lok Sabha Speaker, Mr G.M.C.Balayogi, refused to
uphold the objection.

Cricket does not end
here. Other party leaders too talk about Sachin
Tendulkar, who overcame personal grief to score a century
against Zimbabwe and looked towards heaven as if paying
tributes to his father. The score on the scoreboard at
that time was 372 and this is the number which the BJP
says it will score in the coming elections.

Congress
gesture to BJP

The Bharatiya Janata
Party leaders never miss an opportunity to lambast the
Opposition Congress. But, there is one deed by the
Congress that has come for praise from the BJP
leadership. Party leaders say but for the Congress
President, Mrs Sonia Gandhis, decision to contest
from Bellary in Karnataka, Mrs Sushma Swaraj would not
have agreed to jump into the electoral fray once again.

A prominent spokesperson
of the BJP, Mrs Swaraj had decided not to contest the
elections this time for personal reasons and
this had put a question mark on BJPs credentials as
a pro-woman party. But with Mrs Swaraj back in the fray,
thanks to the Congress, the BJP has more credibility when
it talks of 33 per cent reservation for women.

MADRAS, August 28 
The discussion was resumed today in the Madras
Legislative Council on the Chief Ministers motion
for appointment of Council Secretaries on a salary of Rs
500 each per mensem. An amendment was proposed by Swami
Venkatachalam Chetty fixing their salaries at rupee one.

The supporters of the
amendment contended that there was no necessity for the
appointment of these Secretaries, and if Ministers wanted
the help of such secretaries they should be paid from the
salaries of the Minister.

The Chief Minister
maintained that the Council Secretaries were
indispensable. The amendment was defeated and the
Ministers motion was carried.

There was some
opposition again when the Chief Minister introduced the
Madras Local Authorities Entertainment Tax Bill. The
object of this Bill is to enable certain local bodies to
find additional source of revenue by taxing amusement and
entertainment just like the Bengal Act.